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Health Clichés That Are Actually True

Why do we get 'lovesick'? Can you really be 'scared to death?' Turns out, there's some real science behind these and other common health sayings.

Have you ever said you had “butterflies in your stomach” before a big work presentation or proclaimed a case of “baby fever” to your husband after walking past a sweet, sleeping newborn in her stroller? Recent research shows that these are more than just cute phrases, but actual physiological phenomena with physical symptoms and scientific explanations. Here’s what’s really happening to your body.

Baby Fever

Baby on the brain is a real emotional phenomenon that strikes women and men alike, according to a recent study in the journal Emotion. It’s described as an almost irresistible urge to have children and often connected to a ticking biological clock — think Marisa Tomei’s character in My Cousin Vinny.

The husband and wife research team of Gary Brase, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Kansas State University, and Sandra Brase, a project coordinator with the university's College of Education, have spent about 10 years researching baby fever. They discovered three factors that predict whether a person goes “gaga for goo goo:” positive exposure (holding and cuddling babies), lack of negative exposure (crying and spit-up), and how people weigh the trade-offs that come with kids (money and social life).

The Brases learned the intensity of baby fever “varies from person to person and within the same person over time,” according to Time.com. They’ve also observed that after having children, women tend to have less baby fever while men tend to have more.

Cabin Fever

The next time your kids are driving you bananas while cooped up on a rainy day, consider this: Cabin fever is actually an idiomatic term for a claustrophobic reaction, which can include restlessness, irritability, frustration, and fatigue, according to research from Paul Rosenblatt, PhD, a morse-alumni distinguished teaching professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Some experts liken cabin fever to winter blues or seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a form of mild depression that can develop due to the shorter days and longer dark nights of fall and winter, but cabin fever is more likely triggered by physical surroundings than an absence of light.

Broken Heart

Broken heart syndrome (BHS) — also known as stress cardiomyopathy — is not only real, it’s also potentially deadly. BHS mimics symptoms of an acute heart attack, including chest pain, shortness of breath, a sense of impending doom, and heart failure. According to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine, overwhelming emotional stress can cause the body to release large amounts of stress hormones (such as adrenaline and norepinephrine) into the bloodstream, which can damage the heart muscle.

BHS is most common among postmenopausal women who experience the death of a partner or loved one, yet a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the disorder also occurs in younger women and men. Physical stressors including surgery, respiratory conditions like COPD and asthma, and medications like chemotherapy have also been known to trigger BHS.

Cupid’s arrow also affects the pleasure center of the brain — the same part responsible for drug addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders — which sheds some light on another common catchphrase, “crazy in love.” Psychologist Dorothy Tennov, PhD, even coined a term for the all-consuming state of infatuation experienced by new love birds — limerence, which lasts between six months and two years. But as most committed couples know, those jittery feelings don’t last long — they diminish as a deeper, more committed love grows and you become more comfortable with your partner.

Runner's High

There’s no question that exercise elevates your mood — some doctors even tout physical activity as a natural depression fighter — but can running really get you high? Many athletes have sworn by this euphoric state typically felt at the end of a high-powered or long-distance run, and now recent science backs it up.

According to a study in the journal Celebral Cortex, German researchers found that running elicits a flood of feel-good endorphins that attach themselves to the limbic and prefrontal areas of the brain associated with emotions. These are also activated “when you hear music that gives you a chill of euphoria, like Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3,” Professor Henning Boecker, MD, a researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany told the New York Times. “The greater the euphoria the runners reported, the more endorphins in their brain.”

Beauty Sleep

Forget spending your hard-earned money on miracle wrinkle creams and dark-circle treatment. To look your best, rest. Research published in the British medical journal BMJ found that sleep really does affect your appearance. While numerous studies have examined the link between proper rest and health — including how not getting enough sleep increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and depression — this study was among the first to tackle the science behind beauty sleep. Researchers found that sleep deprivation not only caused people to appear tired, but also less healthy and less attractive.

Increased cortisol levels from a lack of sleep can slow collagen production, promoting wrinkles, according to Prevention.com. And studies have found that cell turnover is faster at night, which can improve your skin’s appearance.

Scared to Death

When your partner sneaks up on you in the shower, it’s natural to shout “you scared me to death!” But the phrase is more than just an expression that describes a state of being startled, according to Martin A. Samuels, MD, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Through his research, Dr. Samuels has found that very intense fear — think a natural disaster like an earthquake or a terrorist attack — can cause sudden death, brought on by a jolt of adrenaline that overwhelms the heart. "Any human is potentially at risk. We all carry this little bomb inside us," Samuels told ABC News. "If the situation is just right, if the stress is bad enough, if it's acute enough, if there's no way out, any of us can die."

Butterflies in Your Stomach

Obviously nerves don’t cause butterflies to literally flutter around in your digestive tract, but stress and anxiety can take a real physical toll on your gut. Often referred to as the “second brain,” researchers have found that some 100 million neurons (more than the spinal cord or peripheral nervous system) line the length of the gut. And it’s these neurotransmitters that are ignited by stress and enable us to feel those “butterflies.”

"There is definitely a connection between the brain and the gut," Francisco J. Marrero, MD, a gastroenterologist with the Digestive Disease Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, told Everyday Health. "The gut is the largest area of nerves outside the brain."